High Kicking on Main Street
One night, Mary McCatty and her 35 fellow Rockettes dressed in sparkling red, delivered a pizza to David Letterman on his show. Another evening while dancing in Radio City Music Hall's 6,000-seat theatre, she spotted Richard Nixon in
the front row. For eight Christmas Spectacular seasons, McCatty whirled through as many as five shows a day, six days a week, eight costumes a show.
Some days, she dashed from the festive lights of Rockefeller Center to Roosevelt Island, down a
flight of concrete steps to the Main Street Theatre
& Dance Alliance. McCatty has taught dance and choreographed shows at Main Street Theatre for 12 years. A great cheerleader for the school's aspiring performers, she coaches them about the business.
"I tell them you have to be a triple threat to make
a living-- you have to dance, sing and act," she says.
"I went on hundreds of auditions, most of which I
did not get. It strengthens you." The jobs she did get include the Broadway show the Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public (she swooned over the sequined Bob Mackie costumes) and the National Tours of Annie Get Your Gun, Jesus Christ Superstar, Sophisticated Ladies, Funny Girl, and My One and Only.
Photo Credit: NYC Cool Guide Arts Section. Image of Mary McCatty, a former NYC Radio Rockette, and Dance Teacher
Not all of McCatty's students are aiming for Broadway, but McCatty teaches each one
with the same care. "We want to make sure that everyone can take dance and theatre. she says, noting that the Main Street Theatre has always offered scholarships based on financial need.
This year's roster of classes includes drama, ballet, ballroom, hip-hop, yoga and pilates. McCatty will teach musical theatre, jazz, and tap.
Growing up near Detroit, McCatty dropped out of the tap class she started at age eight.
"I was terrible," she recalls. "I told my mom I wasn't going back." She began gymnastics at
12 and ballet at 14 ("I was so passionate about it, I was on pointe shoes within a year"). She danced with the Metropolitan Ballet of Michigan while still in high school. At 18, she took
off for New York. Here she trained at several elite dance schools, including the Joffery, Alvin Ailey, and the Phil Black Studio alongside fellow student Jennifer Lopez. She finally began
to tap again at age 19.
As a dance teacher, McCatty has honed her style through her work with AmericanBallroom Theatre's Dancing Classrooms, the dance-in-public-schools program featured inthe hit documentary Mad Hot Ballroom. Pierre Dulaine, a founder of the program, "teaches with comedy and empathy," McCatty says. "He changed my teaching style. He taught me not to be too serious. He taught me that before anything else, you've got to make kidslove dance."
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